Public attention spiked: 3,252 Wikipedia readers in one day, 3.1× the usual 1,062, with 0 article edits.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #attention
- #spike
- #pageviews
Figure timeline
Charles Babbage
Charles Babbage was an English polymath. A mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer, Babbage originated the concept of a digital programmable computer.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
science · English mathematician, philosopher, and engineer (1791–1871) · mathematician · computer scientist · inventor · economist · philosopher · university teacher · engineer · astronomer · writer · also Charles Babbage, Babbage
Born 26 December 1791 · Died 18 October 1871 · Q46633
56 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
Photos & media
14 photos
🔊 How to say “Charles Babbage”
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
In the news
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Recent highlights
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
- Award
- Award
2026· 1 entry
2011· 1 entry
Researchers in Britain proposed a multimillion-pound project, "Plan 28", to construct Babbage's Analytical Engine
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
2000· 1 entry
The Science Museum completed the printer Babbage had designed for the difference engine
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1991· 1 entry
A functioning difference engine was constructed from the original plans
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1983· 1 entry
The autopsy report for Charles Babbage was discovered and later published by his great-great-grandson
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1871· 1 entry
Died 1871-10-18.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #death
1864· 2 entries
For "commencing a crusade against the popular game of tip-cat and the trundling of hoops
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
As well as tallying up 165 "nuisances" over a period of 80 days
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1857· 1 entry
A "Table of the Relative Frequency of the Causes of Breakage of Plate Glass Windows": Of 464 broken panes, 14 were caused by "drunken men, women or boys"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1856· 1 entry
With an added note that the physical tables of Arnold Henry Guyot "will form a part of the important work proposed in this article"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1855· 1 entry
Babbage also published a short letter, "Cypher Writing", in the same journal
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1854· 1 entry
Babbage published the solution of a Vigenère cipher, which had been published previously in the Journal of the Society of Arts
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1846· 1 entry
Mentioned mostly surveys in encyclopaedias, and Babbage's book was first an article in the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, the form in which Rennie noted it, in the company of related works by John Farey Jr
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1843· 1 entry
Portraits of Charles Babbage at the National Portrait Gallery, London
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1842· 1 entry
Charles Wheatstone approached Lovelace to translate a paper of Luigi Menabrea, who had taken notes of Babbage's Turin talks; and Babbage asked her to add something of her own
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1840· 2 entries
In Turin, Babbage gave the only public explanation and lectures about the Analytical Engine
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
At the invitation of Giovanni Plana, who had developed in 1831 an analog computing machine that served as a perpetual calendar
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1838· 2 entries
To his withdrawal from further involvement
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Babbage invented the pilot (also called a cow-catcher), the metal frame attached to the front of locomotives that clears the tracks of obstacles; he also constructed a dynamometer car
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1837· 1 entry
Responding to the series of eight Bridgewater Treatises, Babbage published his Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, under the title On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1834· 2 entries
In the Edinburgh Review (under Babbage's guidance)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Babbage finished last among four
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1833· 2 entries
Into French by Édouard Biot, and into German the same year by Gottfried Friedenberg
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
With Babbage as chairman and John Elliot Drinkwater as secretary
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1832· 4 entries
Awarded Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1832).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #award
- #achievement
Awarded Knight of the Royal Order of the Welfs (1832).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #award
- #achievement
Babbage, Herschel and Ivory were appointed Knights of the Royal Guelphic Order, however they were not subsequently made knights bachelor to entitle them to the prefix Sir, which often came with appointments to that forei
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Came in third among five candidates, missing out by some 500 votes in the two-member constituency when two other reformist candidates, Thomas Wakley and Christopher Temple, split the vote
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1831· 2 entries
Of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BAAS)
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Identified as Declinarians the followers of Babbage
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1830· 2 entries
And experimented in automated computation
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
For a contact with the proposed Bristol & Birmingham Railway
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1829· 1 entry
Career landmark: Lucasian Professor of Mathematics (1829–1839).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #milestone
1827· 1 entry
Babbage inherited a large estate (value around £100,000, equivalent to £9
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1824· 3 entries
Won Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society (1824).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #trophy
- #achievement
His youngest surviving son, Henry Prevost Babbage (1824–1918), went on to create six small demonstration pieces for Difference Engine No. 1 based on his father's designs, one of which was sent to Harvard University where it was later discovered by Howard H.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #life
- #family
Won its Gold Medal, cited "for his invention of an engine for calculating mathematical and astronomical tables"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1822· 1 entry
With what he called the difference engine, made to compute values of polynomial functions
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1821· 2 entries
Leaving unpublished work, and surveyed the field in 1826 in Comparative View of the Various Institutions for the Assurance of Lives
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Or 1822, and was the occasion on which Babbage formulated his idea for mechanical computation
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1820· 2 entries
Awarded Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #award
- #achievement
Initially known as the Astronomical Society of London
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1819· 2 entries
Babbage and Herschel visited Paris and the Society of Arcueil, meeting leading French mathematicians and physicists
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Charles Blagden was in Paris looking into the printing of the stalled de Prony project, and lobbying for the support of the Royal Society
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1816· 3 entries
Awarded Fellow of the Royal Society (1816).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #award
- #achievement
Babbage, Herschel and Peacock published a translation from French of the lectures of Sylvestre Lacroix, which was then the state-of-the-art calculus textbook
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Was a candidate for a teaching job at Haileybury College; he had recommendations from James Ivory and John Playfair, but lost out to Henry Walter
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1815· 1 entry
And was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1816
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1814· 1 entry
Studied at Peterhouse (1814).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #education
1812· 2 entries
Babbage transferred to Peterhouse, Cambridge
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
Was sitting in his rooms in the Analytical Society looking at a table of logarithms, which he knew to be full of mistakes, when the idea occurred to him of computing all tabular functions by machinery
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1810· 1 entry
Studied at Trinity College (1810).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #education
1808· 1 entry
The Babbage family moved into the old Rowdens house in East Teignmouth
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event
1806· 1 entry
Studied at Forty Hill CofE Primary School (1803–1806).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #education
1803· 1 entry
Studied at Totnes Grammar School (1801–1803).
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #education
1791· 1 entry
Born 1791-12-26.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikidata
- #birth